Listing files in a directory in Clojure

Question

How can I create a list out of all of the files in a specific directory in Clojure? Do I have to resort to calling Java or can Clojure handle this natively?

Answer 1

A macro to take care of list the files in directory - recursively or just in the parent directory. It can also search files with specific ending extension.

    ;; lists all the files recursively inside the directory passed as d like "."
(defmacro my-rec-list
  "generate the recursive list" {:added "1.0"}
  [d str rec]
  `(->> ~d
       clojure.java.io/file
       ~(if (= rec "rec")
          `file-seq
          `(.listFiles)) 
       ~(cond 
          (= str "file")  `(filter #(.isFile %))
          (= str "dir")   `(filter #(.isDirectory %))
          :always         `(filter #(.matches (.getPathMatcher 
                          (java.nio.file.FileSystems/getDefault)
                          ~str) (.getFileName (.toPath %)))))
       (mapv #(.getAbsolutePath %))))


(defn my-rec-ls-file 
  "generate the recursive list for only files in a directory"
  [d ] 
  (my-rec-list d "file" "rec"))
(defn my-rec-ls-dir 
  "generate the recursive list for only directory"
  [d ] 
  (my-rec-list d "dir" "rec"))
(defn my-rec-ls-jpg 
  "generate the recursive list for files and directory"
  [d ] 
  (my-rec-list d "glob:*.jpg" "rec"))
(defn my-ls-file 
  "generate the recursive list for only files in a directory"
  [d ] 
  (my-rec-list d "file" "norec"))
(defn my-ls-dir 
  "generate the recursive list for only directory"
  [d ] 
  (my-rec-list d "dir" "norec"))
(defn my-ls-jpg 
  "generate the recursive list for files and directory"
  [d ] 
  (my-rec-list d "glob:*.jpg" "norec"))

It leads to different function which can be called with directory to get the list of files, directory or matching extension file - recursively or non-recursively. Example is -

(def directory (clojure.java.io/file "/Path/to/Directory"))
(my-rec-ls-jpg directory) ;; find all jpg file recessively in directory
(my-ls-jpg directory) ;; find jpg file in current directory